The Death of Reason and the
Return of Jesus

(Part 1 of 2)

Political Correctness has gone mad in the secular world and has overtaken most of the Evangelical Church. Biblically, blindness is one thing, but willful blindness is quite another. Due to this suspension of reason, the stage is being set for Jesus' warning that "For this reason" He will come at an hour when He is not expected.

For God has not given us a spirit of cowardice but a spirit of power, love, and sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7)

In this verse we see it is not of the Holy Spirit to be cowardly. The context of the passage suggests a willingness to suffer for the sake of proclaiming Christ - as Paul did -, for upholding sound teaching and having no sense of ignominy in this proclamation and upholding (verses 8-14). If God's Spirit is infusing our spirits with the true character of Christ it will be evident in a power to proclaim Christ and uphold right doctrine, and in a love that furnishes us a desire to do it.

In this text, Paul directly and strongly relates this to the Last Days and the Return of Christ (verse 12). This contrasts with many situations in these Last Days where cowardice in the church results in a lack of love so that evangelism is either abandoned (eg. Ebenezer Fund) or where the gospel presentation is diluted (eg. Nicky Gumbel's Alpha Courses), and where the upholding of truth is compromised. Contrary to the will of God expressed for us in the text and as demonstrated in the apostolic example of Paul, many Christians today find a sense of ignominy in proclaiming Jesus as The only Way of salvation in an age of interfaith and ecumenism (the issue was fudged on the David Frost TV broadcast about Alpha).

The third element of the new spirit God gives us is "sound mind". The Greek term here is 'sophronismou'. This term means 'sound judgement' resulting in the capacity to control one's behaviour accordingly. The "soph" prefix of this term carries the meaning of wisdom in Greek (when linked to the Greek word for human love it forms our English word 'philosophy'). It is almost the same as the Greek word sophoi, meaning "wise ones", those with an informed ability to reason logically. Sophoi is also a Greek translation of the Hebrew "wise ones" or chakamim: those possessing the divine wisdom mentioned repeatedly in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes that governs their actions. It is not however the same Greek term for 'self control' (ekreitei) as in the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians chapter 5, (although by definition it relates to it) but sophronismou is rather a spiritual nature resulting in the mental ability to think and act logically and reasonably with wisdom in accordance with God's Word.

Where it is lacking, real power and real love are also in deficient supply, but cowardice is not. Bearing in mind the eschatological (end times) emphasis Paul injects, let us examine, in light of this passage, the erosion of this 'sound judgement' which, on the basis of God's Word, should be reflected in sound action.

The Current State of Affairs

The Body of Christ can never stop the world from being the world. Once the true Church fails to be salt and light, however, the world will only become more worldly. Once we go beyond this and the true Church becomes like the world, it can no longer be considered the true Church.

Secular society in the Western world is no longer secular but has a new spirituality (which is actually the old gnosticism, that threatened the early church, in new packaging) called "New Age", which is essentially modified Hinduism, Buddhism, Shamanism and mysticism. From the Fourth Dimension heresy of Yongee Cho to the Paradigm Shift of the late John Wimber and his ecumenical Vineyard Movement that has so influenced Sandy Miller, David Pytches, Nicky Gumbel and British Restorationism, the New Age neo-gnosticism is now the experiential theology of the British Charismatic Movement. So too, in recent years, we witnessed the Kundalini Yoga of John Arnott, Rodney Howard-Browne and John Kilpatrick, that deceived most of both Elim and the Assemblies of God. This did not begin with Peter Wagner or the Kansas City Prophets, however, neither did it begin with Wimber or Arnott. Nor even with William Branham or E W Kenyon, the harbingers of Copeland, Hagan, Hinn etc.

This is the third time that Eastern religion has invaded and seduced Western Christendom. The first time was the pre-Nicean church in the era of Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Basilides and Valentinus, whose gnosticism in the form of perverted hermeneutics (style of biblical interpretation) was imported into the West by the neo-Platonist Augustine of Hippo, the hero of John Calvin but also the chief doctrinal architect of Roman Catholicism. The second time was when the Crusades imported the influence of Islam and Hinduism into Western European Christendom before the Renaissance. The rosary beads, hideously attributed to the Virgin Mary via Dominic (the founder of the Dominican Order responsible for the torture and murder of perhaps half a million people in the Catholic inquisitions, whom the Roman church considers a canonised saint) in fact, originated from the Vishnu prayer beads of the Hindu world, brought from the East by the Crusades and spice traders. Today, however, is the third time Eastern religion has invaded the evangelical church of the West. Because the Charismatic Movement had no biblical doctrine but its theology was largely experiential and mystical in orientation, it was inevitable that it would take its so-called doctrine from Eastern mysticism instead of from the Word of God.

This is not to deny a biblical understanding of charismatic gifts of the Spirit, or a genuinely scriptural understanding of Pentecostalism. Cessationism (the belief that gifts of the Spirit ended with the first century Apostles) is itself a wrong doctrine, originating in its current form with B B Warfield, but having roots in some of the Reformers, who were reacting against the bogus miracles of medieval Catholicism. Cessationism was not believed by Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, George Whitfield or D L Moody any more than Toronto or Pensacola were believed by the saner generation of earlier Pentecostals.

This sad saga, however, is long established and Moriel's readers are already well aware of both the errors of Cessationism on one extreme, and the bogus counterfeits of hyper-Pentecostalism and charismania on the other. But the yet newer wave of deception has not been the New Age beliefs. The newer wave of deception has rather followed on the heels of this existing deception in the form of the political correctness of secular society, entering the Church.

Suspending Common Sense

To an academic, "criticism" simply means the scholarly study of something. It does not mean "fault-finding". It simply means literary criticism as in the critical examination of something in order to understand it intellectually. In the media, "criticism" simply means to review a book, a play or a film. In The Word of God, the Greek word kritikos means to judge something spiritually according to the Bible (Hebrews 4:12). It is related to the Greek word diakrino, meaning to investigate something, such as a prophecy, for instance, on the basis of Scripture, in order to discern whether or not it is of God (1 Corinthians 14:29): understood biblically, Christians are directly commanded to "be critical" by the Word of God.

What the academic world, the theatrical world or event the Word of God means by "critical", and what the term "critical" means in an era of political correctness and in a politically correct church are two entirely different things.

Being critical becomes redefined as mere fault finding or contention. Sadly, we currently have an entire generation of mainly charismatic and Pentecostal Christians, who have never been to a proper Bible study in terms of exegesis of scripture (didaskein - Greek), nor heard a proper sermon in terms of expository preaching (homilea - Greek). The exposition of scripture is replaced by psycho-babble, anecdotes, verses out of context and, too often, just plain hype and con-artistry. Since such people never had actual pastors in the biblical sense of shepherds who feed the sheep, they die slowly of malnutrition, eating straw instead of grain (Jeremiah 23:28) and have no grasp of the biblical doctrine that Paul says is essential to Christian growth and health (Titus 2:1). Consequently, they wind up believing anything, including the very deceptions we are warned would come in the last days (2 Timothy 4:3-5). They accuse those who follow the command of the Lord (1 Timothy 1:3) in condemning unbiblical doctrines, of being unloving and divisive.

The modern state of affairs has become one where such people simply do not know any better and do not understand that it is rather those who depart from the teachings of scripture who are divisive (Romans 16:17), not those who will attempt to protect the Body from such deception.

When someone is really starving, they will eat anything set before them, including toxins which will make them ill, but their condition is compounded by the prolonged lack of nutriment, resulting in a failure of the immune system, so they will not have the means to identify and counteract infectious invasions.

It is like a charlatan on the old American frontier, pedalling snake oil as a miracle cure that makes those who consume it ill, but his living depends on them continuing to consume it - so he warns his customers to avoid a legitimate physician, as a bad and dangerous person. This is precisely what we see today, for example in the attacks of Robert Schuler, W. De Artega, and Wynne Lewis against Dave Hunt. The message is always the same - what the Bible calls being discerning now becomes the sin of being negative or critical which, when examined biblically, is not sin but virtue. If we accept such a perverted definition of being critical it would mean that the Hebrew prophets, the Apostles and, for all of their faults and mistakes, even the Church Fathers and Reformers, should never have been used by the Lord to say, write and act as they did, but instead should have allowed the mystery of iniquity and demonic deception to destroy the true Church, for the sake of some unbiblical definition of "unity", contrary to the true unity of the Spirit, which demands a basis in doctrinal truth (John 17:17 - 23) in order to be united in Christ.

Once the critical faculty is suspended, reason is automatically assassinated. People engage in every form of circumlocution and spin leading to what amounts to plain stupidity.

Homosexuality and Lesbianism

Let us, first of all see this trend in secular society, before we begin to understand how it infiltrates the Church.

As one example, we are, in today's world, supposed to ignore the fact that in the animal kingdom penetrative same sex relationships do not exist among any other primate species. We are supposed to ignore the fact that same sex relationships cannot reproduce; but since homosexuals are unable to have children they demand children of others by proxy, claiming equal rights of adoption and access to surrogate motherhood to bring children up as homosexuals in homosexual relationships. We are expected to ignore the fact that a homosexual and lesbian minority demand the right to impose their will on a heterosexual majority, insisting that heterosexuals have their children taught, in tax funded schools, that homosexuality is as normal as heterosexuality and that children, often from dysfunctional family backgrounds, must discover their own sexuality on the basis of this presupposition. Social policies on everything, from education to same sex marriage rights, are demanded (increasingly as well as affirmative action policies in favour of homosexuals) while we are expected to ignore the scientific fact that zoologically homosexuality among humans is unnatural.

We are expected, for the sake of political correctness, to ignore the medical evidence, that among practising homosexuals average life expectancy may become reduced by as much as 25 years. We are expected to ignore the medical statistics that homosexuals are more inclined to suffer dozens of maladies and kinds of trauma than non-homosexuals and, in the developed world, are statistically thousands of times more prone to HIV infection. We are expected to ignore psychological studies, some of which indicate that partner abuse is far more widespread in same sex relationships than in heterosexual marriages, and that substance abuse is often considerably more prevalent amongst homosexuals. We are also expected to deny in our understanding of the homosexual and lesbian psychology that nearly all homosexual males lacked a positive father image, just as most lesbians lacked a wholesome mother image. Instead, we are expected to pretend that there is some conclusive scientific evidence that people are born with that orientation, when in fact, genetically none exists.

If we raise the issue of the scientific, medical and social evidence concerning the abnormal nature of homosexuality or the detrimental impact it has on longevity, we are considered to be homophobic (the fact that homosexuals are very often heterophobic does not, of course, factor into the equation). In other words, in a politically correct environment, we are expected to turn a blind eye to reality and to behave irrationally in our consideration of homosexuality and lesbianism. Reason becomes the enemy of social harmony.

Several years ago I believed myself led of the Lord to warn that the compromise among Anglicans, Methodists and Reformed churches on the issue of homosexuality and the clergy would soon become an issue among Pentecostals. Those who faulted Jim Bakker for his ecumenism, money preaching and extravagance, and heresy, were portrayed as evil, and "touching God's anointed", (a pathetic distortion of the story of David and Saul at Ein Gedi). In the aftermath of Bakker's public fall and being sent to prison for his criminal activities, his homosexuality was revealed by former associates. Just as an Elim superintendent in the North of England was found to have engaged in homosexual activity, now Roberts Liardon, the American counterpart and friend of Elim's Colin Dye, has been found to be a practising homosexual. Yet those who had been warning about Liardon for years, were the ones who were condemned. Heresy is very frequently a symptom of immorality!

Islam

We see a equal abrogation of sane thinking in the popular disposition towards the Islamic religion. Political correctness states that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. History and current events show the diametric opposite to be the case. Yet in the aftermath of September 11th, Tony Blair and George Bush Junior, rush before the TV cameras to insist that Islam is a religion of 'peace and tolerance'.

We are expected to ignore the fact that thousands of Moslems demonstrated in Trafalgar Square against the institution of democracy, demanding that Britain adopt the feudal Islamic form of government. We are expected to forget that Moslem history supports the contentions of Osama bin Laden that his is the true Islam and that Moslems not agreeing with terrorism and murder have apostatised from true Islam. Abu Bakir (father in law of Mohammed) contended on behalf of Mohammed that the only assurance of salvation was to be a shaheed - a moslem who dies killing infidels in a jihad becomes a martyr.

We are expected to forget that Islam admits that Mohammed was a filthy paedophile who married a 6 year old girl Aisha, and took her virginity when she was the age of 9. We are expected to forget that 70-80 year old Saudi men were exposed on prime time American TV buying little girls from impoverished families in India, justifying it on the basis of the fact that their prophet Mohammed was a paedophile. Islam is still, we are expected to believe, a civilised religion. We are expected to ignore the fact that even small Christian girls, abducted in Moslem societies, are forcibly subjected to clitorectomy (female circumcision), often performed on queues of them with the same rusty razor blade under dangerously septic conditions, in the name of the faith of the Koran. We are similarly expected to ignore the fact that 1,000 British girls a year are taken to Islamic countries and forced to become one of the four wives of people they have never met, often, not infrequently, blood relatives as old as 60 years of age. Islam, we are told, is a moral religion and such practices, we are expected to believe, have nothing to do with Islam. Who, other than Moslems, religiously engage in such disgusting abuses of human rights?

If Islam is a civilised faith of justice and virtue, where is the justice in the feudalism of nearly the entire Islamic world? Where is the justice and virtue in a religion that allows paedophilia in imitation of its founding prophet, polygamy and the oppression of women, and even slavery? If Islam is the faith of tolerance, as Bush, Blair and their Moslem acquaintances insist, where do tolerance exist anywhere in the Moslem world? The answer, of course, is that it exists nowhere in the Moslem world. If Islam is a faith of peace, as the politically correct media continually misrepresents it as being, why are there three times as many armed conflicts in the world involving Islam today as there are all of the other religious people groups in the world put together? Once more, the White House, Number 10, and CNN expect us to relegate common sense to the status of prejudice, in a new world view designed to facilitate a New World Order (a term first coined by Bush Sr) where reason becomes unreasonable.

In this "new think", we are expected to believe that neither Lockerbie nor September 11th , nor the assassination of Robert Kennedy, nor the suicide bombing of American embassies, nor the endless stream of Islamic outrages perpetrated against the nation Israel had anything to do with Islam. Who did such things? Was it the Quakers? Now a Byron California school system is requiring 7th Grade students to take courses in Islam. One thing we may be certain that the syllabus will not contain, however, is the fact that no place in the Moslem world would courses on Christianity be allowed, let alone required as mandatory curriculum. Such an absence of reason means that Islam will not have to destroy the West with jihad, the West has become far too adept at destroying itself.

We are expected to believe that, as was demonstrated by the involvement of senior Bush administration officials with Enron, and the fact that Bush and Cheney are owned and operated by Texas oil interests, has nothing to do with their unwillingness to stand up to the House of Saud and the Wahabi sect of Islam in Saudi Arabia, which decapitates Christians and finances Islamic extremism globally. We are expected to forget that Bush's father was vice-president of an administration that supplied weapons to the Islamic terrorist government of Iran, and then denied it. We are expected to forget that, as a former CIA Director, Bush Senior saw American commandos training Gadaffi's terrorists in Libya, and as President he left Saddam Hussein in power and now the disgraceful Bush legacy of Islamic appeasement is perpetuated by his son, who appeared on TV after September 11th singing the praises of Islam at an Islamic institution in Washington and allowing the US postal service to issue a stamp commemorating Ramadan. Islam is a religion which interprets kindness as weakness and by calling for a Palestinian state in the aftermath of September 11th, the only signal Bush's attitude to Islam is "terrorism works, we are winning the jihad, allah is giving us the victory, America is making concessions out of fear." We are expected to pretend that none of this has anything to do with the politics of Arab oil and the economics of petro-dollars recycled through the banks of London and New York.

We are expected to forget that 18 months prior to September 11th Vladimir Putin warned Tony Blair that the Islamic terrorism he was fighting in Chechnya would soon arrive in the West and that the western position towards Serbia, who was fighting the Islamic Kosovo Liberation Army, backed by Al Qaeda, was unbalanced. Blair and Clinton intervened militarily on the side of the Moslems in defiance of the NATO treaty, which only allows intervention when a NATO country is attacked.

We are also expected to forget that prior to September 11th the Israeli Government had repeatedly warned the White House that the Islamic terrorism they live with would soon become a reality in the American mainland, whilst Bush held a Ramadan celebration in the White House!

We are expected to believe it despite the fact that in one poll 40% of British Moslems and more than 90% of Saudi Arabian professionals expressed support for bin Laden. We are expected to forget that British TV broadcasted well educated Pakistanis at one of Pakistan's most elite private schools regretting only that Bin Laden did not kill more people. Instead of protecting British and American citizens, Blair and Bush reject the clear need for the mass deportation of Moslems not holding British or American citizenship and the closure of mosques funded by militantly orientated Islamic interests and governments but would rather leave their own citizens at risk of further terrorism. "Islam", the politicians tell us "is a religion of tolerance and peace that believes in justice" - something only a imbecile could possibly believe.

In being expected to believe that Islam is a peaceable, tolerant and just religion, we are expected to suspend our powers of reason and to ignore the irrefutable fact that there is not a single Moslem country in the world that is an authentic democracy and that there is not a single Islamic country in the world where Christians are not persecuted. Our politicians expect us to believe their rhetoric and to accept at face value the propaganda of Moslems living in the West that their religion is not one of hostility towards the West nor towards the Judeo-Christian faith, despite the fact that while the Saudi Arabians fund the construction of mosques all over Britain, America and elsewhere, these same heathen savages, who decapitate people for becoming Christians, will not allow the construction of a single church in Saudi Arabia. These are clear facts the Blair Government and the Bush White House expect us all to ignore.

We are expected to forget the 200,000 Christian refugees in East Timor - Islam is a religion of 'peace and tolerance'.

We are expected to forget the 50,000 murdered in the Southern Philippines - Islam is a religion of 'peace and tolerance.'

We are expected to forget the World Trade Centre, Lockerbie and the Pentagon - Islam is a religion of 'peace and tolerance'.

We are expected to forget the Saudis hanging a 15 year old boy for his Christian faith while their country is under the strategic protection of America and Britain - Islam is a religion of 'peace and tolerance'.

We are expected to forget thousands upon thousands of Moslem barbarians rioting in the streets of Britain's cities, demanding the murder of Salmon Rushdie, a British citizen, for authoring a book they didn't like - Islam is a religion of 'peace and tolerance'.

We are expected to forget the Islamic genocide in the Sudan and the church burning in Nigeria - Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance.

We are expected, by the BBC, CNN, the British and American governments and the Anglican Bishop of Wales (who like Desmond Tutu favours homosexual and lesbian ordination) to ignore the fact that the heathen paedophile faith of Islam, based on murder, terrorism, hatred of Jews, and the decapitation of Christians divides the world into two camps ; 'Dar al Islam' (The World of Islam) and 'Dar al Harb' (the world of the sword).

If you do not ignore factual reality and refuse to live in the fantasy world of political correctness created by the media, politicians, and spiritually and morally dead churches - you are the one who is somehow daft, morally deficient, and detached from reality!

Political correctness has indeed gone mad and reason is a casualty of a misguided sense of what brotherhood and equality actually are. Now we are expected to further ignore the absolute and incontrovertible fact that in their own backward countries, Moslems uniformly deny to others the same rights and privileges they aggressively demand from Great Britain, the USA and other more civilised nations.

Social Welfare

When the British Welfare State was formulated by Sir William Beveridge in the aftermath of the Second World War, a single parent family was a war widow with children whose husband and father was killed, either in the Blitz, or the forces or Merchant Navy in the struggle against the Nazis, the fascists or the imperial Japanese.

The sense then was that the tax payer and the Government had a moral obligation to help these war widows and orphans whose breadwinner was killed in the war. Now a single parent family may be a young mother with 4 or 5 different children from 3 different drunken yobbo football hooligans, whom the taxpayer is expected to support in addition to his or her own children. Everyone knows this to be true. Everyone knows this to be an injustice and an inequality, and everyone knows this was not why the Welfare State was established. But we are expected to forget this. We are expected to pretend that these single mothers and absentee fathers are the victims, instead of the working taxpayers.

Euro-Federalism

There is not an economist or banker in the world who does not realise that once a nation loses control of its money supply, its government becomes irrelevant. Once a nation loses control of its capacity to control its economic destiny, it automatically forfeits its capacity to control its political destiny. As we see Daniel's prophecies fast taking shape in the confederation of a non-democratic Europe with an ecumenical/inter-faith religious establishment, the British Government has lifted control of the nation's monetary system out of the realm of voter accountability and placed it into the hands of the Bank of England, restructured along the anti-democratic lines of the American Federal Reserve System, as a stepping stone to junking the pound sterling. We are expected to ignore the fact that the future of British government will not be British but European, and will not be democratic but bureaucratic.

We are expected to forget that in the last federal Europe, the Germans dominated the Holy Roman Empire, in league with the papacy and we are expected to forget what that meant and what it will certainly mean again. As Romano Prodi said, the Euro was not an economic move, but a political one. The European Common Market was the direct result of the Second World War. Thanks to the Europhiles of all major British political parties, contrary to popular myth, Germany won the War.

As the European agenda is propagated in the school systems, Britons are suppose to forget their history. They are expected to not have their children taught the truth: that it was the desire to be free from the scourge of Roman Catholic heresy and its blood butchering papacy and its murdering Jesuit henchmen from the 16th & 17th centuries onward, and that it was the ambition to pioneer the parliamentary democracy which Rome opposed (and gun powder plotting Roman Catholics like Guy Faulks tried to destroy that united The United Kingdom).
The Scots are expected to forget that it was the pro papal agenda of Bonnie Prince Charles acting at the behest of Catholic France in league with the papacy that prompted the Presbyterians to fight with the disliked English against Roman Catholic Bonnie Prince Charles who was born in Rome. Britains are expected to ignore that it resisted everyone from Catholic Spain's Armada to Catholic France's Napoleon and to the Roman Catholic Adolph Hitler and all others who tried to make Britain part of Continental Europe, and which the Roman Catholic church in Britain is trying to make it become today - even telling Catholics to vote for pro-European/anti British candidates. What The Armada, Napoleon, and Hitler could not do with invasion and war, Britain's own politicians are now doing with the mere stroke of a pen, as the heritage that was once the glue of an empire dissipates in a post Christian/neo pagan UK. It is not reasonable to pretend that this is not the very obvious case, but since when is political correctness reasonable?

Continue to part 2